Guidelines for transportation of rail/road highway/ expressway airport projects

The purpose of these guidelines is to assist the project authorities in planning and conducting environmental impact assessment and evolving comprehensive environmental management plan for transportation projects including rail, road, highway/expressway and airports. The guidelines shall be applicable to all new projects as well as projects involving significant changes in existing facilities. As per the guidelines, if EIA was not conducted for existing facilities, all future modifications would be subjected to EIA process. The guidelines lay down the procedure to be adopted for the preparation of EIA report and environmental management plan.

The guidelines also justify the evaluation of project’s impact using select environmental parameters of which following are more significant: Surface water quality, air quality, seismology, geology, erosion, land quality, fisheries, forests, terrestrial wildlife values, noise level, land use patterns, aesthetics, industrial establishments (existing and proposed), resettlement, archaeological/historic significance, public health and socio-economic profile.

The specific conditions that are laid down for preventing the ecological impacts include the provisions of adequate details on: ecological values (floral and faunal) in the route corridor, hourly break down of traffic flow, volume and directional split, speed level and vehicle composition, noise levels as per noise abatement criteria, landuse types in the vicinity of the project area and the productivity of the forests and wetlands.

The guidelines also recommend the implementation of the following considerations during the construction of transportation project in the hilly terrain:-

• adoption of cut and fill technology

• establishment of vegetative cover on all cut/fill slopes and afforestation of road side land

• adoption of erosion control measures

• protection of drainage systems

• dumping of excavated material on scientific lines